Compiling and Installing

  1. Unix / X11
  2. Windows
  3. Other

1. Unix/X11 Compilation and Installation

1.1 Prerequisites for DRI and hardware acceleration

The following are required for DRI-based hardware acceleration with Mesa 7.3:

1.2 Building with Autoconf

Mesa may be built using autoconf. This should work well on most GNU-based systems. If that fails the traditional Mesa build system is available.

1.3 Building with traditional Makefiles

The traditional Mesa build system is based on a collection of pre-defined system configurations.

To see the list of configurations, just type make. Then choose a configuration from the list and type make configname.

Mesa may be built in several different ways using the predefined configurations:

Later, if you want to rebuild for a different configuration run make realclean before rebuilding.

1.4 The libraries

When compilation has finished, look in the top-level lib/ (or lib64/) directory. You'll see a set of library files similar to this: 

lrwxrwxrwx    1 brian    users          10 Mar 26 07:53 libGL.so -> libGL.so.1*
lrwxrwxrwx    1 brian    users          19 Mar 26 07:53 libGL.so.1 -> libGL.so.1.5.060100*
-rwxr-xr-x    1 brian    users     3375861 Mar 26 07:53 libGL.so.1.5.060100*
lrwxrwxrwx    1 brian    users          11 Mar 26 07:53 libGLU.so -> libGLU.so.1*
lrwxrwxrwx    1 brian    users          20 Mar 26 07:53 libGLU.so.1 -> libGLU.so.1.3.060100*
-rwxr-xr-x    1 brian    users      549269 Mar 26 07:53 libGLU.so.1.3.060100*
lrwxrwxrwx    1 brian    users          12 Mar 26 07:53 libglut.so -> libglut.so.3*
lrwxrwxrwx    1 brian    users          16 Mar 26 07:53 libglut.so.3 -> libglut.so.3.7.1*
-rwxr-xr-x    1 brian    users      597754 Mar 26 07:53 libglut.so.3.7.1*
lrwxrwxrwx    1 brian    users          11 Mar 26 08:04 libGLw.so -> libGLw.so.1*
lrwxrwxrwx    1 brian    users          15 Mar 26 08:04 libGLw.so.1 -> libGLw.so.1.0.0*
-rwxr-xr-x    1 brian    users       20750 Mar 26 08:04 libGLw.so.1.0.0*
lrwxrwxrwx    1 brian    users          14 Mar 26 07:53 libOSMesa.so -> libOSMesa.so.6*
lrwxrwxrwx    1 brian    users          23 Mar 26 07:53 libOSMesa.so.6 -> libOSMesa.so.6.1.060100*
-rwxr-xr-x    1 brian    users       23871 Mar 26 07:53 libOSMesa.so.6.1.060100*

libGL is the main OpenGL library (i.e. Mesa).
libGLU is the OpenGL Utility library.
libglut is the GLUT library.
libGLw is the Xt/Motif OpenGL drawing area widget library.
libOSMesa is the OSMesa (Off-Screen) interface library.

If you built the DRI hardware drivers, you'll also see the DRI drivers: 

-rwxr-xr-x   1 brian users 15607851 Jul 21 12:11 ffb_dri.so
-rwxr-xr-x   1 brian users 15148747 Jul 21 12:11 i810_dri.so
-rwxr-xr-x   1 brian users 14497814 Jul 21 12:11 i830_dri.so
-rwxr-xr-x   1 brian users 16895413 Jul 21 12:11 i915_dri.so
-rwxr-xr-x   1 brian users 11320803 Jul 21 12:11 mach64_dri.so
-rwxr-xr-x   1 brian users 11418014 Jul 21 12:12 mga_dri.so
-rwxr-xr-x   1 brian users 11064426 Jul 21 12:12 r128_dri.so
-rwxr-xr-x   1 brian users 11849858 Jul 21 12:12 r200_dri.so
-rwxr-xr-x   1 brian users 16050488 Jul 21 12:11 r300_dri.so
-rwxr-xr-x   1 brian users 11757388 Jul 21 12:12 radeon_dri.so
-rwxr-xr-x   1 brian users 11232304 Jul 21 12:13 s3v_dri.so
-rwxr-xr-x   1 brian users 11062970 Jul 21 12:13 savage_dri.so
-rwxr-xr-x   1 brian users 11214212 Jul 21 12:13 sis_dri.so
-rwxr-xr-x   1 brian users 11368736 Jul 21 12:13 tdfx_dri.so
-rwxr-xr-x   1 brian users 10598868 Jul 21 12:13 trident_dri.so
-rwxr-xr-x   1 brian users 10997120 Jul 21 12:13 unichrome_dri.so

1.5 Running the demos

If you downloaded/unpacked the MesaDemos-x.y.z.tar.gz archive or obtained Mesa from CVS, the progs/ directory will contain a bunch of demonstration programs.

Before running a demo, you'll probably have to set two environment variables to indicate where the libraries are located. For example:

cd lib/
export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=${PWD}
export LIBGL_DRIVERS_PATH=${PWD} (if using DRI drivers)

Next, change to the Mesa/demos/ directory:

cd ../progs/demos

Run a demo such as gears:

./gears

If this doesn't work, try the Mesa/progs/xdemos/glxinfo program and see that it prints the expected Mesa version number.

If you're using Linux or a similar OS, verify that the demo program is being linked with the proper library files:

ldd gears

You should see something like this: 

        libglut.so.3 => /home/brian/Mesa/lib/libglut.so.3 (0x40013000)
        libGLU.so.1 => /home/brian/Mesa/lib/libGLU.so.1 (0x40051000)
        libGL.so.1 => /home/brian/Mesa/lib/libGL.so.1 (0x400e0000)
        libc.so.6 => /lib/i686/libc.so.6 (0x42000000)
        libm.so.6 => /lib/i686/libm.so.6 (0x403da000)
        libX11.so.6 => /usr/X11R6/lib/libX11.so.6 (0x403fc000)
        libXmu.so.6 => /usr/X11R6/lib/libXmu.so.6 (0x404da000)
        libXt.so.6 => /usr/X11R6/lib/libXt.so.6 (0x404f1000)
        libXi.so.6 => /usr/X11R6/lib/libXi.so.6 (0x40543000)
        libstdc++.so.5 => /usr/lib/libstdc++.so.5 (0x4054b000)
        libgcc_s.so.1 => /lib/libgcc_s.so.1 (0x405fd000)
        libXext.so.6 => /usr/X11R6/lib/libXext.so.6 (0x40605000)
        libpthread.so.0 => /lib/i686/libpthread.so.0 (0x40613000)
        /lib/ld-linux.so.2 => /lib/ld-linux.so.2 (0x40000000)
        libdl.so.2 => /lib/libdl.so.2 (0x40644000)
        libSM.so.6 => /usr/X11R6/lib/libSM.so.6 (0x40647000)
        libICE.so.6 => /usr/X11R6/lib/libICE.so.6 (0x40650000)

Retrace your steps if this doesn't look right.

1.6 Installing the header and library files

The standard location for the OpenGL header files on Unix-type systems is in /usr/include/GL/. The standard location for the libraries is /usr/lib/. For more information see, the Linux/OpenGL ABI specification.

If you'd like Mesa to co-exist with another implementation of OpenGL that's already installed, you'll have to choose different directories, like /usr/local/include/GL/ and /usr/local/lib/.

To install Mesa's headers and libraries, run make install. But first, check the Mesa/configs/default file and examine the values of the INSTALL_DIR and DRI_DRIVER_INSTALL_DIR variables. Change them if needed, then run make install.

The variable DESTDIR may also be used to install the contents to a temporary staging directory. This can be useful for package management. For example: make install DESTDIR=/somepath/

Note: at runtime you can use the LD_LIBRARY_PATH environment variable (on Linux at least) to switch between the Mesa libraries and other vendor's libraries whenever you want. This is a handy way to compare multiple OpenGL implementations.

1.7 Building OpenGL programs with pkg-config

Running make install will install package configuration files for the pkg-config utility.

When compiling your OpenGL application you can use pkg-config to determine the proper compiler and linker flags.

For example, compiling and linking a GLUT application can be done with: 

   gcc `pkg-config --cflags --libs glut` mydemo.c -o mydemo

2. Windows Compilation and Installation

Please see the README.WIN32 file.

3. Other systems

Documentation for other environments (some may be very out of date):